


everything starts where it ends

by gdgdbaby



Category: Chronicle (2012)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Character Death Fix, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-23 09:14:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/620502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gdgdbaby/pseuds/gdgdbaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes Steve three months to heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	everything starts where it ends

**Author's Note:**

> alternate reality where steve survives the storm, written for advent. warnings for violent thoughts and actions and emotional trauma. originally posted at [livejournal](http://gdgdbaby.livejournal.com/97646.html).

That night, after Matt calls him and tells him in a panicked voice that Steve's been rushed to the hospital, Andrew dreams of killing his father.

It is a deeply involved dream—there are picks made out of ice and the plucking of eyes and lightning, so much lightning—but, for some reason, he can't seem to be able to remember anything concrete about it when he wakes up the next morning. He cannot decide if this is a good or bad thing. In time, like all dreams do, it melts away into the back of his head, dusty and disused.

 

 

It takes Steve three months to heal. The doctors say it's a miracle he survived at all. Andrew hears this secondhand through the grapevine at school, because it is all anyone can talk about—freak storms and lightning strikes and third-degree burns. In the interim, it seems that everyone has forgotten about Andrew's brief stint in the limelight. Everyone has gone back to ignoring him—even Matt, who refuses to speak to him at all. When Steve comes back to school, his eyes slide right over Andrew, like he doesn't exist.

Andrew tamps down the anger and moves on.

 

 

Andrew spends most days flying around on his own, recording videos of anything and everything. When his mother feels well enough to watch, he hooks the camera up to the television and plays them for her. She is at that point in her battle against cancer that she does not think to ask how he recorded his footage, which is just as well. It's like raw film of a nature documentary, all long shots of the sky and close-ups of rain dripping off of leaves and ferns bending gently as the wind blows. Matt would probably have something deep and philosophical to say about it, but Andrew thinks he just likes recording the slow march of time, unchanging and inevitable.

In February, Matt begins dating that girl he'd always been interested in. Casey is pretty and nice and far too good for him, but none of it has anything to do with Andrew anymore. He is thankful that whatever nascent telekinetic pathway exists between the three of them, sex has nothing to do with it.

 

 

The day Andrew's mother dies, his father beats him again.

Or, at least, he tries. This time, Andrew doesn't even let the first blow fall before he tosses his father—Richard, not his father, he'd never be his father again—clean through the front wall of the attic.

Richard dies from the fall. Clean, quick, painless. Andrew bends over his bloody body, remembers the vague dream from months ago, and can't help but feel a vague sense of disappointment.

Matt finds him in his room, packing before the police invariably arrive.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?"

Andrew gazes at him for a moment, and then resumes dumping clothing into the dusty suitcase.

"Look, I'd try to stop you, but we both know who would win, so I won't."

"Are we talking again?" he asks. His voice comes out scratchy from disuse. "Why are you here? Why aren't you off fucking your new girlfriend—"

"Jesus, Andrew." Matt steps forward uncertainly. "Your parents just died—"

"My mother died." His voice wavers for a moment before he rights himself. "The piece of shit on the sidewalk outside isn't relevant to me. I'm leaving before the cops get here."

Matt blinks. "Why? Everyone would know it was self defense—"

"How did you even know something had happened?"

Matt makes a vague gesture at his head. "Headache. Nosebleed."

"I see Steve isn't here."

Matt gapes at him blankly. "Are you kidding?"

It hurts more than he thought it would, but he's far beyond that now. He's killed somebody. There are consequences. "I'm done with this conversation," he croaks, snapping his suitcase shut and shoving Matt out the door with his mind.

Matt picks himself up off the lawn, a panicked expression on his face. "If you run away, they'll think you're guilty!"

"If I stay, they're going to find out about everything." Andrew shrugs. "Mom's dead. There's nothing left for me here."

Matt doesn't try to follow him when he takes off, which tells him all he needs to know.

 

 

Andrew goes to Tibet, first. It's predictable, of course, but there's no reason for him not to. He has nowhere else to be. And the monks, at least, don't charge for room and board if he helps out around the monastery.

He spends a month there flushing Washington's muggy pollution out of his system, does nothing but fetch water and watch the sun rise and sit with the monks during daily prayer and meditation. They can't levitate themselves with their minds, but they aren't scared or surprised when he does. The non-reaction almost puzzles him, before he remembers—this isn't high school, anymore.

There's something about being so high up in the mountains (surrounded by snow, the air thin and crisp in his lungs) that affords him a measure of clarity. It isn't something mystical, brought on by mere proximity to a dubious higher power or any of East Asia's so-called exoticism. It's just that for the first time in his life, he doesn't feel trapped: not under Richard's thumb, in a family situation from which there seemed no escape, nor the crushing weight of daily humiliation at school. He feels good. He feels clean.

 

 

In April, he leaves Tibet and decides to backpack across Europe. The monks seem content to let him stay for as long as he wants, but there's an insistent itch to see as much of the world that he can, now that he isn't bound by anything, and his camcorder's collecting dust in his battered suitcase. It's almost a compulsion to carry on the tradition. He slings the camcorder and a change of clothes over his shoulder and goes.

He pays his way through room and board by doing stupid tricks on the streets. Magic and illusions are a universal language, and the kids that watch him wide-eyed and slack-jawed love a little flair for the dramatic, the kind Steve had taught him when they'd been preparing for the talent show, all complicated flourishes and coins from behind the ear and doing cartwheels in midair to shrieks of delight.

Europe is also when he finds that he's developed latent healing abilities, like some fucked up 21st century version of Jesus. He's in Prague one night and a stray dog darts into the street just as a car careens down the cobblestone. The dog's sent flying from the impact. The vehicle zooms away in a plume of exhaust.

It lies stretched out against the sidewalk, bleeding out onto the pavement, and whines as Andrew approaches, its pupils dilated. Andrew puts his hands on the wound to try to stem the flow of blood and feels his fingertips go painfully hot. He tries to tug them away but they stay glued to the dog, his palms glowing. He squeezes his eyes shut at the strange flash of light, and when he looks down the mangy stray's upright again, wagging its tail, only indication of the hit-and-run the blood still matting its fur.

The stray lets out a loud bark and lopes away, as alive as ever. Andrew stares down at his rust-colored hands and wonders briefly whether Steve and Matt have the same thing, too, before shaking it out of his mind.

In London, he goes to an Internet café and checks the Seattle local news. There'd been a report on Richard's death and his own disappearance: from the pictures, it seems like the entire debacle had been made to look like a robbery-homicide, with investigations still ongoing. Andrew spends a day wandering around the city feeling confused about it before he rationalizes it as some sort of defense mechanism on Matt's part. Nobody could suspect the cousin's family of foul play—they'd have nothing to gain from a secondhand television and what remains of Andrew's mother's old jewelry that hadn't been pawned off.

 

 

After Europe, it's Dominica's Boiling Lake (which he nearly falls into), the Afar Triangle in Ethiopia, and then New Zealand. On the day Steve and Matt are supposed to graduate, Andrew floats a comfortable mile and a half above Queenstown, legs crossed in midair, filming the glaciers below. He's fumbling with a new tape when the headache hits him, throbbing reverberations from his temples that make him clench his eyes shut. He drops the camcorder, hands clapped to his head.

He manages to dip down and rescue the camera before it smashes against the ice and then falls to his hands and knees on solid ground, gasping from the pain. _Andrew_ , a voice is saying in his head, and it sounds something like Matt's voice, as if it were coming through a very long tunnel.

The headache dissipates as quickly as it came. When he brings his hand to his nose, rivulets of blood are trickling from it, the metallic taste dripping into his mouth.

 

 

He makes his slow way back to Tibet after that, hops through Australia and Southeast Asia, buys new film when he runs out of 8mm and spends nights at cheap hostels. He spends two dawns in the Philippines just watching the waves come in on the beach, before the tourists start flooding over the sand with their fluffy blankets and pitched umbrellas. In Vietnam, he gets a haircut, and then treks the rest of the way on foot, feels the clean burn of it in his legs as he pushes onward.

The headaches come intermittently, pulsing softer the closer he gets to the monastery, until he makes it over a melting snowdrift one morning and sees the familiar rooftops rising from the cliff-face. Steve and Matt are swaddled in thick North Face anoraks and leaning against the banister of the main building. Steve spots him first, eyes going wide as he approaches.

Andrew's still angry, of course, the pit of his stomach sinking with it—but mostly he's just tired, with tinges of soft-focus regret mixed in. They don't say a thing, just watch him walk past them into the interior courtyard.

 

 

Steve finally bites the bullet three days after Andrew returns. "Hey," he says, leaning against the outcrop where Andrew's sitting, waiting for the sun to set.

"How did you find me?" Andrew asks after a moment, and Steve jumps a little.

"Not many people can say they've ever seen someone levitate themselves with the power of their mind."

Which is patently true, of course, and the monks would've found no reason to lie to them. "Why did you come? There are better things to do with your summer before college—"

"I'm not going anymore," Steve says, and Andrew whips his head around to look at him—really look at him—for the first time in too many months, his brow furrowed. Steve seems—haggard is the only word for it, despite whatever full recovery he might've made from the lightning.

"What do you mean?"

Steve shrugs uncomfortably. "Taking a gap year. Or something."

"What do your parents think about that?"

Steve scowls, crosses his arms. "They're getting a divorce, so they've got their own problems to deal with right now."

"Oh," Andrew says, frowning. "I'm sorry."

"Not your fault," he says. "Plus—" he hesitates a little before plowing on, here, "Matt and I promised each other we'd tried to find you after we graduated."

"Really," Andrew says, voice going dull and flat. "Why? So you could turn me into the authorities?"

"What? No!"

"Lest we forget, you guys were the ones who started ignoring me, first—"

Steve sends him an incredulous look. "You left me there, man. I got struck by fucking lightning and you left me there, lying in the grass, and you didn't even—"

"I thought you were dead," Andrew interrupts, hands clenching into fists. "I couldn't stay there, I was—" He closes his eyes and tries to calm down, the residual anger roiling through him in waves. "I was so angry and terrified and I didn't know what to do."

"You could've called somebody—"

"You weren't moving, and I knew the lightning was my fault because I couldn't control—" Andrew breaks off and just breathes. The bottom curve of the sun's just hit the top of the mountaintops in the middle distance, sends light scattering out in thin beams. "I'm sorry I left you. It was stupid of me, but I didn't know what else to do. I had to—I had to get myself away from there before I hurt you even more."

For a long moment, neither of them speaks. They watch the sun slip down over the horizon, the sky tinting a rusty orange color as it goes.

"You didn't have to come, you know," Andrew says finally. "I'm fine. I've been fine."

"I think you lost like thirty pounds since we last saw you, and you were always a skinny fucker anyway," Steve snorts, and Andrew's lips turn up despite himself. "Look," he continues carefully, staring at Andrew with earnest eyes. "I—I'm sorry, too. I was angry, and we should've talked about it but I was in the hospital and then at school—"

"I get it," Andrew says.

"I don't think you do," Steve replies, dry and genial as ever. "See, I like you. I think that's what made it hurt more."

"Oh," Andrew says, mouth going a little dry.

"Yeah," he says, turning away and leaning forward on the outpost, arms braced against the rock. "I was surprised, too."

The sun's almost two-thirds of the way gone, dark blue chasing the orange away.

"Do you think you're ever gonna go back?" he asks.

"I don't know if I could," Andrew says numbly, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "Too many bad memories."

Steve nods.

"You can't fix everything," he blurts out, and Steve glances at him over his shoulder. "This isn't some video game or comic book where everything's alright at the end. Just because you—we—I don't—I'm still—"

"I know," Steve says, a grin breaking loose over his face, and it's stupid how much Andrew had missed that, how much he'd missed talking to people who understood, how much he'd missed waking up in the morning and knowing that there were people waiting for him. "But we can try."

"Yeah," Andrew says, bewildered in a wholly different way than on that terrible night half a year ago when he thought he'd killed his best friend. A last sliver of sunlight's peeking over the mountaintops, crowns Steve's head like a halo. "I guess we can."


End file.
